


Love Songs for the End of the World

by woke_up_on_derse



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canon Divergence-This character has a backstory now, Courser Culture, Gen, I love my boy so much, M/M, Write the origin story you wish to see in the canon, brief mention of rape, overall institute exploration, was gonna call this x6: origins as a play on x-men: origins but decided that was stupid
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-04-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 03:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13627764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woke_up_on_derse/pseuds/woke_up_on_derse
Summary: Eve wasn’t the first. The scientists took her name from the Bible, a book long out-of-commission for most of the wasteland, as an allusion to the first woman God ever made. Fitting, with how critics from the other departments often claimed synths were tangible proof of the robotics department’s god complex. But even in the Bible, Eve did not come first. First was Adam._____****______X6 is caught between a loving nature and a hurtful nurture whilst sorting out the world, himself, and what it means to be alive. A further look into the Institute and the lasting effects it has on its finest creations.





	1. Mark I

Eve wasn’t the first. The scientists took her name from the Bible, a book long out-of-commission for most of the wasteland, as an allusion to the first woman God ever made. Fitting, with how critics from the other departments often claimed synths were tangible proof of the robotics department’s god complex. But even in the Bible, Eve did not come first. First was Adam. Eve came next, to fill a role Adam failed to. People typically don’t spend so much time, resources, and brain power to create something that would fail, so the general consensus was that Fall of Adam 2.0 was not-so-good of an idea for Humans 2.0. But you can’t always get what you want. If Adam never ate the fruit, never gained a knowledge of self, he would’ve stayed in a “perfect” condition forever. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), curiosity is so very person-like, and eventually The Institute got a little bit better at making person-likes than they would like to acknowledge. 

__________*************__________

Death isn’t so great, it turns out, but especially not if you were married to the person experiencing it. Reasonably, Doctor Langley is upset with this turn of events. Unreasonably, Doctor Langley has quit her responsibility as lead scientist for the “Make Emails Work Correctly” Project (name pending) until she can bring herself to “move on” (read: make someone love her again). Always looking for an edge, some amount of recognition, a little more respect given to his department, Doctor Binet has struck a deal. It goes something like this: if Langley can change her desire from “make someone love her” to “make something that can function as though it is capable of loving her”, and if Binet can create a suitable pseudo-husband, Langley will get back to her job of trying to make inter-department emails send “almost always” instead of “if you’re lucky”. 

Now, Binet is not a stupid man. The doctor is aware he is creating what will most likely sum up to a horse kick to the balls of the entire concept of love. But Binet is also a lonely man, a single man, an empathetic man. He lost his spouse a while back as well. To all this, he attributes his decision to help Langley. Now, Binet is _kind of_ a stupid man as well; an emotionally stupid man, an un-self-aware man, a man not without a little bit of selfish nature. Unbeknownst to him, Langley’s ~~literal love machine~~ personal synth will function as a sort of guinea pig. Her Adam will proceed his Eve, working out the kinks inbetween. He will only later recognize that this project was for himself all along. Only after Adam is long gone, all memory of him erased, will Binet recognize this.

___________***********__________

Project Adam has been moved from the concept phase to the drafting phase. A right bitch to get board approved, this one was. Oddly enough, no one was really eager to devote manpower and precious, precious energy to creating a machine capable of ~~being fucked~~ imitating human affection for the sake of a coworker. 

“It will push the boundaries of what we consider synths. Through this, it will help us reevaluate what we even consider ourselves to be. It will _redefine mankind_.”, were the buzzwords Binet had stressed.

The atmosphere in the room had responded _“If this works, what differences would be between us and them? Would they still be robots? What is the real definition of mankind? Will we even **like** that definition?”_ , but eventually the vote came to nervously giving the greenlight. 

Currently, Binet is walking an uncharacteristicly quiet Langley through his first blueprint. Taking his own de-mothered son into account, he had made Langley’s Adam the perfect father for her recently de-fathered kids. Super-human perception for watching kids and the boiling pasta at the same time, a soft voice for reading bedtime stories, tall and broad-shouldered for piggy-back rides, strong enough to carry couches and move heavy boxes out of the way whilst cleaning, beautiful eyes for... uhhhh... even better scope vision? Not everything had to be utilitarian. In fact, most of what they were pouring over right now was aesthetics. She made it clear he was to look nothing like her late-husband Matthew; Adam would have dark skin where Matthew was light, Adam would have high cheekbones where Matthew’s face was mostly without topographical note, Adam would have a soft mouth with a soft smile where Matthew was always beaming brightly. A few minor details were languidly tossed onto the idea table, making a stark difference when Binet rushed over him having a titanium skeleton. Langley nodded harshly, Binet did not need to explain the inclusion of this expense. Langley had heard of what happened with those Mark III coursers.

You see, the Mark III coursers were, at that time, the latest and greatest not only in courser tech, but synth tech altogether. Stronger, faster, scarier, and, unfortunately for two of them, significantly prettier. Most synths look like either they have been in Finals Week their entire lives, subsisting off of pizza rolls and 4 hours sleep, or like their features were randomly generated repeatedly until they came up with something vaguely reminiscent of one of the Seven Dwarves. But these coursers were pretty. Too pretty. As with all nice things, something evil had to reach it. It turns out, two of the coursers had been “used for unauthorized and unintended purposes”, which is the way you say “raped” if you don’t want to imply that coursers have the capacity to consent or not consent. Because of that refusal to properly acknowledge a situation, the final verdict on their “malfunctions” of the coursers was that something had been knocked loose during the act and that synths were not able to take that kind of physical interaction. 

Hence the titanium frame.

Langley would have a lovely husband capable of singing her children to sleep, baking, cleaning, and being dropped from up to 40 feet without sustaining substantial damage.

__________************__________

For the unaware, there is no one thing that is responsible for love. There is a chemical released when one feels love, of course, but you cannot install love onto a person. That was the first hitch they ran into once Adam had been actualized. He did everything he was instructed to, making marbled chocolate and vanilla cake with buttercream frosting for his new daughter’s birthday, getting hard water stains out of the shower, balancing checkbooks, even creative and human-like things like painting the baby’s bedroom and calming down his 4-year-old son while he cleaned blood off of the kid’s knee. For some reason, loving the kids came naturally, but loving his wife was perfunctory. Goodnight kisses were so fast it was like she burned him, cuddling on the couch was awkward and attempts towards it were quickly abandoned, even something so simple as hugging felt forced. Being happily married was impossible, the one thing Langley expressly needed him to do, his prime directive, his reason for existing, all unmistakeable failures.

After so long laboring over her creation, it was like losing her husband all over again. Project Adam was recalled only weeks into what had seemed so successful. Her kids were sad to see him go, too young to have developed the “us vs them” mentality about synths. It was like losing their father all over again; but to them, Adam had had been a little too real, and it felt less like losing their "real" father a second time, and a little more like losing yet another father.

________********________

It’s sad whenever a science project fails. It’s frustrating and depressing whenever an exuberantly expensive, groundbreaking science project fails. 

They couldn’t just throw away the whole damn synth. Binet was adamant that he could fix what he considered his most advanced creation, begging for just a few more days for tweaking, but Langley swore up and down that she never wanted to see him again. This time, she wouldn’t win with her magnificent temper tantrums. It was decided that he would be renamed, re-uniformed, his signature striking eyes and cheekbones would be covered, he would get a new and radically different assignment, and “Adam” would be completely erased from the records, his own memory, and would, in essence, cease to exist. She would even get to choose, within reason, where “her” synth would be reassigned so she could best avoid him. 

“He’s a heartless bitch. Send him to the surface, I don’t care.”, was Langley's ruling.

They did.

_______**********_______

“Heartless bitch” is very nearly a requirement for anyone sent to the surface, doubly so if done on courser work. X6-88, as he was now called, fit the bill for a courser so smoothly Adam was forgotten by all nearly as soon as he was forgotten by the one who could be vaguely considered himself. Binet’s blueprints, which were in danger previously of being tossed, were suddenly priceless as the SRB used them as a template for their Mark IV line. Strong, fearless, perceptive, a quick learner, and most importantly, loyal. Some SRB scientists joked that he would “hardly need training”. 

It was a joke, though, and courser training is brutal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bethany Esda didn't feel like he needed any semblance of a backstory so it's my city now and they can't stop me :) Always thought it was pretty creepy that Binet had a personal synth who was clearly on the short end of an immense power imbalance, so here's a bit further on that topic.  
> Headcanon justification time: I had interpreted his comment in Pickman's Gallery to be about the painting techniques so he likes to paint now. Also, he was canonically chosen to have some level of interaction with the only known synth child (synth Shaun) so he's good with kids and you can't take that from me.
> 
> ........ also, if you get the (slightly reworded) reference in the title you are legally obligated to tell me


	2. The Beginning of Something Really Excellent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically there's nothing to refute the claim that coursers have best friends, keep hands in lockers, can specialize in melee, etc.

Absolutely nothing passed through X6-88’s mind as he lay on his top bunk, watching the seconds flick past on his internal clock. The numbers projected on the inside of his eyelids told him he had been at it for nearly 6 minutes now, but he didn’t intend on doing a damn thing for at least another 4. Well, maybe one thing. He dropped his hand over the edge of his bunk, swinging it gently until another, much colder, hand folded itself into his. Z3-45. While X6 ran warm, Z3 ran freezing. X6 thoroughly enjoyed having a heat sink below him, specifically for moments like these. Hours and hours of holding and firing energy weapons will burn your hands right up if you aren’t careful, but Z3 massaging the heat out of him with his thumb certainly helped. It wasn’t selfish. It was more of a mutualistic relationship, with X6 warming him up on cold overnight missions in return. Because of this, the two always took each other along as partners whenever they could, which, granted, wasn’t very often. Z3 would milk it for all it’s worth when they could, however; he seemed to get too cold even during the warmer nights when they both had to take their coats off. It was almost as though he was just curling X6 into his chest simply because that’s what you do at night, or something. Kind of ridiculous. 

Or maybe not too ridiculous. If it weren’t for all the cameras in the barracks, X6 doesn’t think anything would stop him from crawling in next to Z3 and letting him rub circles into the expanse of his back and shoulders. But there are cameras, and X6 is already pushing his luck by not wearing his armored coat. The Institute doesn’t like nudity. Is it still nudity if you are fully-clothed? Dr. Ayo seems to think so. But when there are no cameras, and there is no Dr. Ayo, and it’s just far too hot to wear a shirt, X6 likes to lay back and have Z3 draw shapes into his back. It’s a fun little game. Z3 draws something, X6 guesses what it is, then X6 gets mad at Z3 for making it too hard to guess, and Z3 draws something different so that X6 can bitch about that next. A favorite game for both parties involved. There aren’t really any games played on cold nights, mostly just the game of Z3 trying his best to meld directly into his friend’s skin, if how close he holds him is any indication. Fond memories of those nights wash into X6’s blissfully blank mind and he finds himself growing even warmer, despite his heat sink. 

He turns his head down to see said heat sink. Z3’s face is as blank as ever, but that doesn’t mean much, that’s just how he is. Even for a courser, Z3 doesn’t smile too often. Cool hands smooth over X6’s knuckles, and he is reminded of how he doesn’t have his designation printed on them like the older models do. Z3 isn’t that much older than him, he doesn’t think. X6-88 has been around for 10 years, but has been physically and mentally developed to _about_ the level of a human 30-year-old the whole time. The reasoning behind it, he had overheard (he would never be so stupid as to _ask_ ), is that Father hadn’t wanted to deal with “the messy bits” of growing up. Why, then, create a permanently defenseless and uselessly young synth in his image? Age is so strange. It’s something humans always ask about, but it doesn’t mean much to him. “10 years of experience at being a 30-year-old” is what he always tells them, simple. What does mean a whole lot to him, is that he doesn’t have his designation written anywhere on his body. 

When coursers die in the field, their bodies are retrieved and disposed of (or scrapped and recycled if possible) in a way that makes sure no one can use their high-tech remains, not that any wastelander is smart enough to know how. It is courser tradition to keep a part of it, however, before it can be thrown out. They keep the designators. Usually the courser’s designation is printed onto their knuckles, so that’s what they keep. Cryofreeze it and delicately and respectfully shove it into the Dead Stuff Locker. Maintaining the hand collection is a whole other tradition that the scientists don’t know about. Or maybe they do, and just let them have their morbid joys. They have a lot of them. Given that death is a pretty big part of their lives, it became a pretty big part of their culture, and remembering the dead specifically is a big thing, too. X6 has his Words stuffed under his bed and keeps his Acts tallied into his rifle, but he doesn’t have any sick hand tattoos, and that bothers him. His eyes refocus on Z3’s hand. The actual surface area of the symbols isn’t a whole lot, but the black ink stands out sharply against his light skin. Z3 was modeled to appear as an East Asian man, with shoulder-length black hair and a shorter frame than most, low to the ground and harder to knock off his feet, meaty shoulders for slow but devastating swings. Heavy melee build. Despite his diminutive height, he insists on being the one to hold X6, rather than the other way around.

The four minutes X6 had promised himself were long used up, and he slips his hand out from Z3’s wordlessly. Sometimes Z3’s age did matter. It meant he didn’t have any additional training that day. Slipping back into his coat, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and made for the door.

_________*************_________

If you were to ask just about any person what nasty trait coursers most embody, they would probably tell you “wrath” without so much of a second thought. They would be wrong. Coursers take great joy in their work, making humans (and some large portion of synths) think that they love the taste of blood. That would be less wrong. While coursers truly feel most alive in the heat of battle, their lasting memories, once the adrenaline has faded, are of bringing synths back home, keeping them safe. No, wrath is not the worst side of them. If you were to ask any scientist in the SRB why coursers are so insufferable, they’d tell you “it’s all that pride”.

Pride is the hallmark emotion of coursers, and X6-88 is the worst.

You’d think that if the scientists hated the bloated egos of their “finest creations” that they might stop calling them that within earshot, but no. Humans love to hear themselves talk. It’s almost surprising how little thought the humans put into how their actions will affect others. Much less surprising is seeing a whole flock of coursers with their ears pressed to the door, eavesdropping as the day's scores are read aloud. X6 waits until the end when his name will inevitably be used in conjunction with some sort of superlative rank, and is neither disappointed nor surprised this time. He stretches vainly under the paper-thin guise of nonchalance, and heads for the door. He’ll tell Z3.

A hand flops gracelessly onto his shoulder. A Mark IV. None of the older models would make the mistake of 1) grabbing someone from behind without warning 2) grabbing _him_ from behind without warning or 3) touching another synth in public without orders from a human. X6-88, prime example of mercy and kindness that he is, decides not to whoop her ass for it.

“I can see why Father trusts you so much, even though you haven’t fully graduated yet.”, says the pale redhead. Her knuckles read out “B1-02”. Huh, they must have run out of letters that quick and had to start from A1 all over again. Would this be the fourth of fifth time it’s happened in his lifetime? X6 allows himself the luxury of brief heresy to think that maybe this problem would be more easily solved if Dr. Ayo didn’t murder so many of his brothers and sisters. Maybe that would help with their constant understaffing and expensive need to create more of his kind. Just a thought.

“I have no doubt that I will graduate soon enough. I’m plenty qualified.” Moreso than most of the other coursers, but X6 is trying to cut just a bit of negativity out of his diet, and so he stays quiet on that truth. “Thanks, but I doubt Father has time for any individual synth.”

B1-02 cocks her head to the side a bit at that last part. “I thought you were assigned to assist Father’s mother?”

“.......... I was assigned for what now?”

__________**************___________

In all honesty, he’s more than a little embarrassed he hadn’t heard that Father’s mother was alive. He never gave any serious thought to how humans were created, and just kind of ignored the fact that he must have started somewhere. He knew, in the basest sense, that human creation requires two other humans, but he was also running off the assumption that Father was above all that “caring about dead family” stuff. What brand of gall was this woman buying that gave her the idea to show up without an invite? How strong are blood ties that she was allowed passage into The Institute without any qualifications? 

Today he would see how qualified she is. 

If she isn’t a scientist (a “lawyer” he had overheard her call herself, defender of some pre-war legal system so flimsy as to need people to interpret its own rules), then she had better be a damn good fighter. He sits cross-legged on the beach at Libertalia; knowing people of The Commonwealth, this “Esther” woman will almost certainly be playing on her own schedule. 

Hours pass. He wishes he had some paint, the stars look beautiful; horrifying that there is no ceiling, horrifying that it just keeps going on and on, but beautiful. He only sees the stars every once in a while, so he’d like to take them back home on a nice, safe, _contained_ canvas. That’s one thing he will give The Commonwealth, it looks different all over. Every mile of it has some slight variation (even if it is just different takes on what the word “ugly” should mean in practical application), and those miles have variation by the hour, and if you add enough hours together you get different seasons, and each season changes everything completely.

However, to every blessing there is a curse, and the hours of the stars are the coldest hours. This will make the water especially unpleasant, something the water really needs to be. Why have normal water, with its uncertain depth and contents, when you can have night water, with its additional effects of chill that sticks to you for the duration of the night with no hope of the sun drying it away and exceptionally low visibility? During the day, he at least has _some_ head’s up for anything capable of grabbing his foot and pulling him under; at night, he can hardly see within striking distance. 

Sometimes he dreams he is miles offshore when an octopus or a squid or some long-armed monster of myth grabs him by surprise and he goes down without a word. His enhanced lung capacity betrays him by tacking extra minutes of life onto the struggle for air and clarity.

He wishes he had some paint.

_______***********_______

The hours grate on him for so long he nearly wishes for a book or some other outdated “entertainment” before Esther arrives.

“Oh, you’re here already.” She seems genuinely surprised, as though she expected him to be some rude son of a bitch who shows up at 3:34 A.M. with no real excuse.

“I’m here.”

“Yeah, I see. Uh, I was expecting to call in and tell them to bring you once I got around to doing this thing.” Clearly this is meant to be apology-adjacent, but only further angers the courser. Once she “got around” to proving her worth to the god-like organization that gave him life. Got it. She obviously had plenty of other important things to do.

“No need. I am here. I assume you have been briefed and have a strategy laid out already, yes?” He did not assume she had strategized, but she seemed like the kind of person who would squirm under the weight of responsibility.

“Strategy? Isn’t it just search and retrieve? . . . I guess my strategy is just to kill the lot of them and get on with our lives.”

Fair enough.

_____********_____

X6-88 had never been what you would consider a “team player”, but so long as her armor kept Esther too slow to be within earshot of him, he could pretend there wasn’t a “team” aspect at play at all. For some reason, Esther chose to wear a full suit of power armor to a mission spent entirely on open water. While she was right that she would not need a real strategy, some foresight to plan armor accordingly may have saved her a few stumbles. Graciously, he slows down for her (after picking off all the fun “hidden” raiders popping their heads out with a death wish, of course). If she were to get hit due to his carelessness, he'd certainly be reset. 

Dr. Ayo had informed him he was “a jackass” and “arrogant” and he needs to “stop turning everything into a dick-measuring contest”. X6 objects to that last part; he's landed enough groin shots on raiders to know with assurity what a dick is, and has never once asked anyone for a comparison. He can't improve upon that last one, but today he can work on his arrogance. 

“I can let you go ahead, if you'd like.”

“You know, I’m actually pretty slow in this”, she sheepishly admits, “You should go on ahead. If I run in this bulky thing, I might fall off.” As if in response, the ground under her heavy boots groans and gives way. With a shocked yelp, Esther leaps the gap to the sturdier plank X6 stands on and narrowly avoids knocking helmet to sunglasses. 

That settles it, he'll have to play babysitter today. 

Ever the gentleman, X6-88 steps to the side to let the big dumb baby waddle past. He'll have to stay in catching distance to make sure she doesn't slip and drown in her metal cage. Esther decides to ignore his decision to ignore her decision to keep their strategy the same, and strides on ahead as though it wasn't obvious she's made an ass of herself. 

Esther, it turns out, knows her way around a super sledge. Obviously not as well as Z3, X6 is quick to remind himself, but who is? It’s impressive how quickly she taught herself. Sloppy tactics, but impressive. She gets kind of creative with it as well, choosing to knock raiders into the water rather than stay around to finish them off. Better at knocking down ghouls or mindless hordes, X6 rattles off to himself, prepping a field report, maybe save on ammo with super mutants or other bullet sponges. He borders on excited thinking about what she could do to multiple targets, worth mentioning to Dr. Ayo. X6 fully plans on being there, of course, protecting Father’s mother, because Father trusts him, because he’s the best. 

She’s an idiot, and he doesn’t like her, but he likes Father and he likes being important. He’ll protect her, no one else can.

_____*********_____

“Jesus, what a mouthful.”

“Then talk fast, ma’am. Just make sure you get it right.” Honestly, reading off deactivation codes isn’t even that hard. It’s always worked for him. 

“But what if I forget part of it?”

“I'm right here. If you forget it, I'll say it myself.” What a dumb bitch. Even just worrying about it is the height of incompetence. That level of self-doubt is certainly going in his report. Ever since she accidentally flung her super sledge into the water along with that raider he's been growing more bitter by the minute. She would sink like a concrete necklace in that armor, so he'd had to dive down after it. He'd like nothing more than to be done so he can go home and wash the irradiated water from his uniform. He now knows why Father had trusted him with her, he's always stuck with the “don't let the child kill itself” jobs. 

“Okay, thanks.” Esther, not yet able to tell his angry glare from his regular glare, gives him a genuine smile. She seems to like him more by the minute, thinking him kind for going diving for her. “You're very reliable, you know?” 

“Thank you, ma’am. Would you like to go first or should I?” X6 says as he pushes her towards the door. 

“Well, I'll be saying all the things, won't I? Better make an entrance.” 

______*******______

Status report:  
Gabriel: Deactivated  
Everyone else: Paste

There were three, maybe four, fucks given while Esther smashed raiders into boxes, but those fucks were all allocated towards aesthetics. She seemed to be trying very hard to not look gross while rooting through the pants of corpses for bullets and spare caps. But there's only so much you can do to hide stuffing a box of gore-laminated Instamash into your bag. No one has to know she plans on eating that gross shit. The Institute can mind it's own damn business with that slimy gruel they call food.

She straightens up and gives him a weird half-salute that almost makes his head spin with how inappropriate that is. Father’s mother saluting a synth, now he's seen everything. “Well X6, been a pleasure working with you. Tell my son I said hi!” 

“Of course I will. The pleasure has been all mine, however.” X6 says before breaking eye contact and wrapping up his job. “X6-88 requesting relay.” 

What a wild day. He'll _have_ to tell Z3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two new main characters! I love both of them and hope you do too :) Thanks so much for reading a fanfic about one of the least popular characters in the game lmao


End file.
